


I had a dream where I took you by the throat

by enmity



Category: Tales of Series, Tales of Xillia
Genre: F/F, Gen, I kinda feel bad, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 20:26:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15670668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: Muzét visits her sister once, the week after she is born.





	I had a dream where I took you by the throat

**Author's Note:**

> Something I needed to get out of my system after finishing Xillia 1 today, no, I don't know why either.

She visits her sister once, the week after she is born. She slips quietly out of Elympios, spotting the village in the mountains and floating into her shrine, and Muzét marvels at the sight of Milla dozing in her crib, at the tiny chest rising and falling to match the heart beating beneath it. They are the same age, but Maxwell has no pretenses to keep for Muzét, and so she is already grown, her features already starting to etch into their disarming softness. Her cooing smile is broad but calculated, and without the innocence radiating from the newborn she bends over the cradle to observe—to mock silently for being the fake, the ruse, the _decoy_ , and the spirit feels the slash of her mouth grow wider, taunting, until she realizes her jeering is wasted on the baby, and stops.

The Four exchange wary glances at each other, then her, but Muzét reaches out anyway, uncaring, her slender fingers deceivingly gentle as they flutter over the infant’s cheeks. Tracing the round face for a resemblance she doesn’t see, a point of comparison that doesn’t exist—and it is then that she realizes how fragile the life beneath her fingertips is, how different they truly are, though it is a fact that they came from one and the same. They are sisters and yet they are not, and her newborn essence has yet to fully comprehend and twist the human concept of sentimentalism to suit her own whimsical designs, but this is what Muzét _does_ know:

Once the baby wakes up and gains lucidity she will be fed fiction to believe the grand lie that is her mission, and spend her life laboring under the brilliant delusion, under Maxwell’s gambit. This child, this human sleeping beneath her, _her sister_ —she is so much less, she is nothing, a child brought to life for the sake of a lie, a hollow purpose she can’t even claim as her own. Milla is nothing like her big sister, who knows what she is, what she was created for, and for that Muzét should be glad.

She smiles. The distance between them shrinks, and Muzét leans down to kiss Milla’s cheek, warm and tangible and so ordinarily human, pressing her mouth briefly against her sister’s warm face the way she vaguely remembers witnessing a woman do in Elympios—and the next moment she’s pulling away, as jittery as a criminal caught, and somehow thrilled at the faint impression of contact her lips leave, like evidence of her misdeed. Because she isn’t supposed to leave Elympios, not really, but she’s _killed so many today and I’m sure Maxwell’s satisfied enough with the carnage_ _for now, isn’t he?_ _I’m fulfilling my purpose after all, aren’t I?_

Milla’s eyes open, bright and curious, and she won’t remember this, but Muzét lets her thumb linger on Milla’s blush, and she laughs, glee bleeding from her lilting voice when she greets—

“It’s so very nice to meet you, Sister.”


End file.
